Benjamin Britten, War Requiem, English National Opera, London Coliseum, London, 16 November – 7 December 2018

War Requiem is one of the greatest choral works of the twentieth century. Benjamin Britten juxtaposes the anti-war poetry of Wilfred Owen with the timeless ritual of the Latin Requiem Mass. The result is a passionate outcry against man’s inhumanity to man.

Joining the production team as designer and making his ENO debut is the Turner Prize-winning artist and designer Wolfgang Tillmans. ENO Music Director Martyn Brabbins conducts this new production created to mark the centenary of the end of the First World War. ENO Artistic Director Daniel Kramer’s contemporary staging seeks to examine and process the grief of the incomprehensible loss of life from wars past and present, offering us all a hope for the future.

War Requiem is performed by the combined forces of an 80-strong chorus, a children’s choir of 40 from Finchley Children’s Music Group, the full ENO Orchestra, a chamber orchestra, and three soloists.
More information: https://www.eno.org/whats-on/war-requiem/

Qu'est-ce qui est différent? , Carré d’Art-Musée d’art contemporain, Nîmes, France, 4 May - 16 September 2018

Wolfgang Tillmans, David Zwirner Hong Kong, 26 March  – 12 May 2018

CALL FOR IDEAS:

Forum on European Culture invites you to contribute to:

Eurolab – New ideas to communicate the EU

In the run-up to the European elections in May 2019 artists, writers and creatives who feel passionate about the European project come together during the Forum on European Culture in Amsterdam from May 31- June 3. During the 4-day Eurolab, they examine what has gone wrong in the communication of, and about the EU and how to make a new and powerful beginning.

In an increasingly interconnected world voices that create division between people and peoples, have gathered momentum and try to unravel the achievements of cooperation and solidarity. Europeans in particular are challenged by nationalist and divisive language from outside and from within the EU. 

Eurolab is a fact-finding mission of what went well and what went wrong in the last 25 years of communicating Europe. In workshops and interview sessions we aim to compile a comprehensive toolbox of arguments, strategies, and ideas that can be applied to campaigns across different demographics and used by different professional groups (e.g. ‘Teachers for Europe’ ‘Scientists for Europe’ ‘Farmers for Europe’). Eurolab wants to collect ideas about how cooperation and solidarity can be spoken for in a fresh and compelling way to large audiences. How can the European Union be valued by its citizens and be recognized as a force for good, rather than as a faceless bureaucracy?

We understand that the EU is not perfect and that some of its problems are of its own making. However we are convinced that today’s Europe is the best there ever was, and that the European Project should be protected in these unstable times.

The brief for this open-call is to send us proposals for communicating the advantages of cooperation and friendship amongst people and nations. Please send drafts, designs, photos, poems, words and short film scripts that can be developed and contribute to a clear yet multi-faceted campaign. Across all media. We need messages, how the Union works and how life would be without it; - how it was without it. And we need ideas how to challenge the organisation itself, how to make it better. Alert us of the failings of the EU. Alert us of the successes of the EU. Also welcome are ideas that are not focused on the EU itself, but on its values, and how they play out amongst people in everyday life in non-political ways.

Each entry will be considered by a panel chaired by Rem Koolhaas and Wolfgang Tillmans, and will contribute to the pool of ideas to re-brand Europe. Eurolab operates on an open source model and we are not looking for one ‘winning’ idea. We don’t want to ‘sell’ anything. We believe the idea of the EU is good, and want to present it clear and open. Eurolab aims at building a network across the EU member nations from South to North, from East to West. We will stay in touch with you should your ideas be taken further.

We look forward to inviting a selected number of contributors to Amsterdam in June to investigate Europe’s potential and to find new language and visuals for it. The ambition of the workshop in Amsterdam is to further develop the proposals together with communication and media experts, and turn them into a real and effective campaign. 

We are looking forward receiving your contributions in our mailbox This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. as soon as possible and no later than April 18. Please send files as PDF, maximum 15mB, with files named as ‘Surname_Name_Eurolab2018’. For more information on the Forum on European Culture, click here.

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Eurolab respects the intellectual property rights on the contents of the submissions of the participants. You will retain the rights to it, however you agree that they will become part of larger body of work and broader community and not exclusively yours. At any stage you will be given opportunity to ensure you are correctly represented in the larger framework of the project.

About the Forum on European Culture:

After a successful edition in 2016, De Balie and DutchCulture organize the second edition of the Forum on European Culture from May 31st until the 3rd of June 2018. During this 4-day festival, leading international artists and philosophers will come together at various locations in Amsterdam to share their ideas about the future of Europe. The second edition of the Forum is titled ‘Act for Democracy!’ More info on www.cultureforum.eu. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

 

Wolfgang Tillmans, Fest, Galerie Buchholz, Cologne, Germany, 2 February 2018 – 7 April 2018

Wolfgang Tillmans - Heute Will Ich Frei Sein EP (five videos)

Wolfgang Tillmans: Fragile, Musée d'Art Contemporain et Multimédias, Kinshasa, Democratic Republic Of The Congo, 13 January – 18 February 2018

Out now: Was ist anders?, Jahresring 64, Edited by Wolfgang Tillmans and Brigitte Oetker on behalf of Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft im BDI e.V. Published by Sternberg Press, 228 pages.

The English edition will be available in January 2018.

Texts by Philipp Hübl, Jonas Kaplan, Joe Keohane, Michael Seemann and interviews with Lionel Barber, Carolin Emcke, Sigmar Gabriel, Bianca Klose, Stephan Lewandowsky, Brendan Nyhan and Wolfgang Schäuble.

Wolfgang Tillmans - Hamburg Süd / Nee IYaow Eow Eow, CD Digipack + 48 pages artist booklet, Kunstverein Hamburg / Fragile, 2017

Wolfgang Tillmans, Concorde, 128 pages artist book, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne, 2017/1997

The first four editions of the book were printed from the same set of 1997 films, which in the end were no longer good to be used for another edition. After not being available for ten years, Wolfgang Tillmans decided to rescan the original photographs and make a 1:1 facsimile of the original book for its 20th anniversary. Available now.

Wolfgang Tillmans: 2017, 320 pages, exhibition catalogue edited by Chris Dercon and Helen Sainsbury with Wolfgang Tillmans, TATE Publishing, 2017

Download posters / more information ...

Wolfgang Tillmans: South Tank, 3–12 March 2017

Programme of live events: 

Fri 3 Mar, 20.00: Wolfgang Tillmans, Tim Knapp and Jay Pluck
Sun 5 Mar, 13.30 - 17.30: The 30 tracks that make ‘It’s a Sin’ by Pet Shop Boys
Wed 8 Mar, 20.00: Lori E. Allen with TEARS|OV, Thomas Brinkmann
Fri 10 Mar, 20.00: Othon featuring Wolfgang Tillmans
Sat 11 Mar, 20.00: Throwing Shade, Wreck & Reference

The Tanks, Tate Modern, Bankside, London, SE1 9TG
Admission: Free (Please arrive early to ensure entry. Once the Tank is at capacity Tate will operate a one-in-one-out policy)

...more information

Wolfgang Tillmans, Conor Donlon, 192 pages artist book with an essay by Alex Needham. Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2016

Please see below a recap of the pro-EU / anti-Brexit campaign in the form of a mail, which kept growing longer and longer as I was writing it, to Cornelia Parker, who sent me the attached photograph:

Dear Cornelia,

Thank you so much for the photo taken on referendum day in Chichester. It means a lot to me that our posters made it to outside London. It was an uphill struggle, Annett Kottek at my London studio literally wrote to fifty different student unions and just got three replies. One regional Labour Party office requested posters and said they would forward our email to relevant people but we never heard back. Charities and faith groups, like the Quakers, liked them a lot but said, because of their charitable status, they were not allowed to express a political opinion. The same went for many of the arts organisations and colleges we wrote to. However a good number of them across the country didn’t seem to be troubled by this and displayed and distributed the posters vigorously. Respect to you! There were many individuals who adopted poster tubes and distributed them. Volunteers Chester Kottek and John Cronin made endless runs to the post office mailing tubes. Martinspeed, the art shippers, did a great job storing the 21 industrial size pallets of poster tubes, and delivering them to Sebastian Street one by one, all free of charge.
The self-print and social media parts of the campaign were the most visible, but I’m glad I insisted on having old fashioned A1 posters. Thanks to the financial help of Evelyn Stern, David Chipperfield and Ruth and Richard Rogers we printed 25000 of them. Daniel Mason of Something Else Press handled the logistics of this printing job in London.
After having designed the first 25 online posters, released 23rd April, Paul Hutchinson and myself at the Berlin studio tirelessly kept texting and designing new and adapting existing posters, including specialised versions for different target groups. Also at the Berlin studio Armin Gerold Lorenz doubled up as website manager and together with Evelyn Marwehe as organisers of the numerous press requests. Freelance editor Graham Fallowes was available online to instantly copy-edit any new statements and poster texts.
In the run up to the 7th June registration deadline I realized the potential of T-shirts, which we then hastily produced thanks to Merch and Destroy. These then went to various famous people or people who know them, with mixed results – many did not respond, others did. Juergen Teller’s photo of Vivienne Westwood went viral, and so did the one of ‘James Bond’ on the last day of the campaign. David Cameron re-tweeted it two hours after I posted it on my Instagram account.
In the last ten days of the campaign a larger print run of T-shirts made in London were distributed around art galleries and book shops as well as through Lily Cole’s site impossible.com. i-D magazine and Dazed Digital held drop in online shoots with the shirts and the Boiler Room DJ site got strongly behind the cause.
Always in the good hands of Eugen Ivan Bergmann at the Between Bridges space in Berlin, we held events around Brexit and related subjects, the refugee crisis and the rise of populism and right wing extremism across Europe.
Needless to say almost all involved have a ‘migrant status’, are ‘immigrants' of some sort: three British living in Germany, two Germans living in London, a German born to an Irish father, an Austrian in Berlin, a Kazach born German and so on.
Also a big thank you to all at the studio who were working on my other projects and who found time to contribute greatly, through feedback and advice and by keeping a good spirit in the midst of the madness.
To all who consider getting involved in activism, I can only encourage you to do so. It was a great and rewarding experience, despite not reaching our goal. It brings people from different backgrounds together in unexpected and friendly ways and creates friendships that hopefully will last. For myself I plan to take this further and to other places as right wing populism and extremism will be with us for some time to come. Please get in touch if you would like to contribute in whatever way in the future. I was not the only artist generating messages and imagery: In the light of the dull official IN campaign it was great to see that artists can have a different and often more direct voice. Check out the eu-uk.info website.

My heartfelt thanks and respect to all supporters!

Below is the new Between Bridges programme which promises to be a strong series of events before the summer break. Please come by daytime, or on Thursday evenings and other dates advertised below.

Wolfgang

Please visit the archive section tillmans.co.uk/campaign-eu to see and download all parts of the campaign.

Wolfgang Tillmans, ¿dónde estamos?, 2016
Sonora128, Mexico City, 1 Mar  – 31 May , 2016

Wolfgang Tillmans, On the Verge of Visibility, Museu Serralves, Porto, Portugal, 30 Jan - 25 Apr 2016

Wolfgang Tillmans, Hasselblad Center, Gothenburg, Sweden, 1 Dec 2015 - 14 Feb 2016

Out now: What's wrong with redistribution?, 320 pages artist book with an essay by Tom McDonough, Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, 2015
(published in conjunction with Hasselblad Award 2015)

Wolfgang Tillmans, House of Art of České Budějovice, Budweis, Czech Republic, 24 Nov - 28 Dec 2015

Various - Ostgut Ton | Zehn, 3xCD, compilation, 2015, cover artwork by Wolfgang Tillmans 

PCR, David Zwirner, September - October 2015, New York, USA

This exhibition in the context of QueerFest in St. Petersburg was closed by the police and is now looking for an alternative space.

QueerFest is a unique human rights event. It was invented and implemented in order to create in the city places for a dialogue between the various parts of society in order to develop tolerance to the invisible and stigmatized groups. To fight against homophobia, biphobia, transphobia and xenophobia in general, festival chooses a language understandable to everyone - the language of culture, art and beauty.
http://queerfest.ru/en/

i-D Magazine, the activist issue, no. 336, 2015

download pdf

Spex, no. 361, Fade To Mind, 2015

dowload pdf

Lignine Duress, Galerie Chantal Crousel, 18 Apr - 23 May 2015 

Abstract Pictures (Collector's Edition), Hatje Cantz, 2011

Sammlungspräsentation / Collection display, Fondation Beyeler, Riehen, Switzerland, 2014

(Mis)Understanding Photography - Werke und Manifeste, Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany, 14 Jun - 17 Aug 2014

Manifesta 10, The European Biennale of Contemporary Art, St. Petersburg, Russia, 28 Jun - 31 Oct 2014

Wolfgang Tillmans - Book for Architects. Two channel video installation in 'Elements of Architecture' Central Pavilion, 14th Architecture Biennale Venice, curated by Rem Koolhaas

8th Berlin Biennale, Ethnologisches Museum Dahlem, Berlin, 29 May - 03 Aug 2014

Now available:
Utoquai
artist book in a series of subscription books published by TBW Books, Oakland, California
www.tbwbooks.com 

Affinity, Wako Works of Art, Tokyo, 18 Jan - 15 Mar 2014

Silver, Galerie Buchholz, Berlin, 28 Nov 2013 - 18 Jan 2014

central nervous system, Maureen Paley, London, 14 Oct - 24 Nov 2013

Wolfgang Tillmans at MAVI - Museo de Artes Visuales, Santiago, Chile

Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York, 03 May – 22 Jun 2013

Wolfgang Tillmans "Kepler Venice tables – Edition für die Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen”

Kunst nach 45, Sammlungspräsentation / Collection display, Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus und Kunstbau München, 2013

Pin-Up Magazine, Spring-Summer 2013

Museo de Arte de Lima, Lima, Perú, 19 Mar - 16 Jun 2013

The Plant 04, Spring 2013

Moderna Museet, Stockholm, 06 Oct 2012 - 20 Jan 2013

Online catalogue (English) featuring the text by Tom Holert, The Unforeseen
Online Katalog (Deutsch) mit dem Text von Tom Holert, Das Unvorhergesehene

British Art Show 7,  Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, 23 Oct 2010 - 9 Jan 2011